Coronavirus origin, conspiracies and silence
In a village on the outskirts of China’s Wuhan, an elderly woman is chanting quietly. In early February, her 44-year-old brother died from coronavirus, and she cannot forgive herself.After the ceremony, Ms Wang says that the shaman received a message from beyond the grave. Her brother, Wang Fei, had absolved her of any blame. “Feifei doesn't hold me responsible,” she says. “He was trying to comfort me and persuade me to accept his death.”Her brother died in a Covid ward, unable to see visitors; his last days lived out in a series of desperate text messages. “I feel so tired,” he wrote in one of them.Ms Wang’s guilt is a product of one of the cruellest aspects of this global pandemic – the enforced isolation of sufferers from their families.“I couldn’t go to the hospital to take care of him
